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by ellethom



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 11:30:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7101415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellethom/pseuds/ellethom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This came out of no where.  I have no idea why i wrote this.  I know a bit about PTSD but i hope i have been respectful to anyone who has lived under its grip.  The story is based off of a song, extra points to anyone who can figure it out</p>
<p>Music is such a large part of my life, one day i heard this song and it just seemed to fit with these two. </p>
<p>Unbrowsed, Unbent, Unbeta'd</p>
<p>Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

He heard the distant tin of Roy Orbison as he skulked around the side gangway of the two story house.  The neighbors on the other side of the chain link waved but silenced at his finger pressed against his lips. Mrs. Manderly, the ancient woman in the folding lawn chair made a finger pistol at him and shook her head. 

Of course she was cleaning her guns on the porch; what else would she be doing on a Saturday afternoon?

He gave the elderly woman a nod and a thumbs up as he skulked along to the front of the house.  “Only the Lonely” had grown louder as he came through the gangway and emerged to the sound of traffic on the avenue leading to the Boardwalk, the faint clicks of metal, and Orbison’s fearful crescendo of sadness.

Jaime had purposefully parked his car in the alley behind the house.  He chose the surprise attack knowing if she saw him coming, she would be back in the house and behind those walls that even the Wights of old could not breech. And, he thought with a small smile, he wanted to see her reaction when she realized he had, once again, turned up on her doorstep.

He watched her for a while, long limbs pulling apart weapons in full view of anyone passing.  She was intent in her actions, certain that she was at peace in this one chore that had little chance of being interrupted by anyone. Her face held a determination that he had learned she carried in every action important to her.

Jaime ran his good hand through his hair and sighed.  Fear wasn’t something he was accustomed to, his old Platoon Sergeant Stark had once told him that the only time anyone could be brave was when they were afraid.  Fear wasn’t like that though, fear didn’t give you courage, or make you brave, fear made you act.  And, if what his brother had told him was true, then action was the only course he could abide today.

Jaime stepped out onto the front lawn and approached the worn wooden steps.  She hadn’t paused in her task, the vigorous scraping of the oiled cloth along the desiccated pieces on the table in front of her continued at a metered, if frenzied pace. He stood with his arms folded and listened to her humming along with the song.

“I know how he feels,” Jaime said finally at the end of the song. Ray Charles flared behind the last strands of Orbison and Brienne lifted her head.  Cerulean fields of honesty bore into him.  She stood, reached for her guns, Jaime was glad they were disassembled . “Don’t run,” he said.

She shook her head but ceased her hands. “I’m not running.”  Brienne looked down at her hands, still grasping pieces of her weapons. “I just have nothing to say.”

“You know why I’m here.” He said with the same steel he used on his men a lifetime ago.

“Do I?” she asked.

He advanced to place his foot on the bottom wooden step and like any frightened animal, Brienne moved back toward the ornate wooden door. 

“Your brother’s been shooting off at the mouth again?” Brienne accused but stood her ground.

“He has,”

“He should learn to keep his mouth shut.  If for nothing else to keep less wine from falling in.”

“You’re probably right.” Jaime nodded. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I should know if you’re seeing someone.”

“Why? “ Brienne’s scowl was more familiar to him than his own voice.  If she was scowling, he knew he had a chance, that they still had a chance. “Why should you know anything about my life?” She dropped the pieces from her hands and folded her arms. “You may have been born into entitlement Jaime Lannister, but that does not entitle you to my life.”

He sighed in the late afternoon sun.  “Brienne, I would have thought after all that man has done to you, you’d have better sense then—“

“Are you calling me stupid?” she asked in a near whisper.”  How dare you!  How dare you come here and accuse me of making bad life choices.”  She cast a knowing look at the man in front of her, “Perhaps you should look at your own home before you go looking in mine.”

She was right; of course she was always right.  “You know that’s been over for a long time.”

“Do I?” she asked. “Whatever I get up to with Hyle Hunt is my own business and I think you should go on home now.”  She turned to go inside. 

“Brienne, wait.” He was desperate, if she couldn’t see that then she was blinder than their old professor Maester Aemon.  “Just wait a minute.”

“For what?” she asked, but did not open the door, did not run inside. “For you to convince me that you haven’t gone back to her?”

“I haven’t.  I never will.”  She scowled again, deeper this time. “I don’t know what my sister may have said   to you, but after all these years, you should know that she hates you.”

“You’re living together.” Brienne said.

“She moved back home after her husband died, yes.  I should have told you, yes. I should have moved out of the house myself, yes.” He said punctuating each assertion with a nod of his head. “But you didn’t have to take up with the likes of Hyle Hunt.” He accused.

Brienne’s scowl shifted to a frown, Jaime ticked off another point in his favor. “You definitely should have told me.”

“I know that, now.”

“How could you have not known that the whole time?” Brienne asked. “How could you not think I would need to know that your sister has moved into the same house as you?”

“It’s a big house.”  He grinned. 

Brienne huffed, a step back Jaime realized. “It doesn’t matter, anyway.” She said with a wave. “GO and live your life Jaime Lannister.  You never owed me anything.”

“I owe you everything.” He said; words he never thought he would say to anyone in his life. “A Lannister always pays his debts, but Brienne, it would take me 10 lifetimes to even scratch the surface of what I owe you.”

From the porch, Brienne stood with her arms crossed, shaking her head in slow motion.  “No,” she whispered. “Your life is your own.  I’ve done nothing.”

“You’ve done _everything_.” He fired.  “Everything I am right here, right now is because of you.”

He watched the emotion crawl across the stone of her glare for an instant; had he blinked he would not have seen it. She sighed then, it was a start.

“This isn’t,“ Brienne began but shook her head at a loss of words. “We’ve never been anything to each other than two people who survived Lys together.”

“But, we survived.” He insisted.  They held a gaze for longer than he thought he would get from her.  In the end she lowered her gaze and shuffled back toward her guns.  He allowed the distance; it wasn’t going to be an easy battle to convince her, but soldiers knew winning was only a symptom of survival. He squared his shoulders as Van Morrison cried for Tupelo Honey.

“I’m leaving.” He announced.  “Tonight.  Now actually.”

She had never been a slow woman, but Jaime could see it took an entire two minutes for her to realize he didn’t mean to get back in his car and try again tomorrow. “I can’t do this here anymore, Brienne.”

She made to slump back into the chair in front of her rickety table.  Instead she whirled on him, eyes blazing. “Where will you go?” he asked as a child would to a parent leaving for the last time.

Jaime shrugged. “I have my car, some money and no plans.” While his words seemed carefree, Jaime angled his features into a hard set of purpose. 

She nodded then, wordless as she folded her arms and leaned on one of the porch support beam. “Now who’s running?”

He shook his golden head and chanced another forward step. “No, I’m starting over. “ he said “I’ve been spinning my wheels since…” he gave a wave of his right arm. “I need to start somewhere else.  Be somewhere else.”

“And your sister?  Is she going too?”

A laugh slid from his lips before he could stop it. “I don’t think a life on the road without a plan for world domination would suit her.”

“She turned you down?”  Brienne asked.

He shook his head again, “I never asked her.” He turned and sat on the steps, suddenly feeling his 38 years. “I just need a fresh start.”

“I understand.” She nodded.

“Do you?” He turned his body to face hers, his long legs folded. “Because I seem to believe you may need one too.”

Brienne snorted and finally sat into her plastic porch seat. “I wasn’t the one who had a life changing disability.”

“You were attacked too, Brienne. He added slowly.  The truth was, her scars from the same incident had left her a near recluse.  She lived in her father’s home but rarely did anything more than tend to her father’s memory since his death five months before.  Brienne ran her large hand over her shredded cheek as he spoke.

She bristled at his accusation and threw him a look that dared him to poke further. “I suppose the Selwyn Tarth museum will stand without you holding up the porch?” he added a flourish toward the house as he spoke.

“I attend my therapy sessions.” She insisted.

He nodded.  He knew. “And so do I.  But how much more of it is a crutch rather than a leg up?” Jaime asked. “How long before that is all you have?”

She stood so fast the plastic table nearly tumbled over, it shifted in opposition to her quick movement until her large hand stilled its movement.  The pieces of gun shifted but managed to stay on the table. “This house is all I have!”

“Only if you let it be, Brienne.” He offered with a tilt of his head. “Come with me.”

She held the look of a hare caught in a trap.  He thought she would run into the house for sure, when she didn’t he could not help but smile.

She slammed down into her seat again, “you have a lot of nerve, coming here and trying to disrupt my entire existence.”  The words were an accusation, but slipped softly as if she considered the truth behind them.

“You know me, always stirring shit up.”

“I can’t.” she said with another shake of her head.

“You can.”

She did stand then, and again Jaime worried the frightened rabbit would duck back into her warren and again she surprised him with her stoic show of strength.  He had been avoiding getting her to address her PTSD.  He knew she attended therapy, but some soldiers sought solace in therapy as a means of justifying their resistance to moving on.  Brienne had been in that holding pattern for far too long.

“Its not that easy for me as for you.  I have no one left.  You still have family.  You still have people who would check on you if they had not heard from you in a while.  I have no one, Jaime.  Do you understand that.”

He surprised himself in his speed and in the feral, throaty tone the words came forward in “I don’t understand, Brienne you are not alone.  You have me!”

She did run then, angling her body toward the door.  He leapt the distance in a burst of desperation. “I am not going anywhere without you.” He pressed closer, taking her long arm into his good hand. “And you are not running away from me.” He stared into her honest eyes and for once he could not see a truth in them; so clouded from the pain he had caused her.  Are you craven?”

She pulled her arm from his grasp and fixed her face into a mask of stone. “You once accused me of it, after the mortar shell blew apart my hand.” He shrugged, burdened by the weight of memory. “You told me to fight and live, to fight and keep living.”

“I am living!”

“You’re not living.  You’re biding time until you can be one of the soldiers we lost in Lys.” Jaime took a step back; he couldn’t willfully cause her any more pain. “I love you, Brienne.  I have for a long time.  I am sorry I never made that clear.”  He turned then and jumped down the steps to the lawn.

He turned toward the gangway and stormed off.

@@@@

She would never admit to running through the old house watching him walk through the space between her house and Mrs. Manderly’s.  When he reached the alley, she watched him climb into his car and drive off. 

No one would ever call her a coward, not after five years in combat with few breaks in between.  She watched the empty space where his car had been hating him.  Hating herself.

She stood at the window like a faithful Husky, expecting him to come back and knowing she had pushed him away far enough that he wouldn’t return.

Looking around the antiquated kitchen that had not changed since petal pushers had been in vogue, Brienne sighed and rubbed tired blue eyes.

She ambled into her father’s study, the walls still held the scent of him even 6 months after his death.  He had taken her in when she was broken, had given her shelter and helped her put those pieces back together again.

The desk was still covered in her father’s papers, including the last academic paper he had been working on when she had rushed him to the hospital.  His books were still stacked and arranged in the haphazard labyrinth that mirrored his brilliant mind. “I love you Dad.” She whispered as she closed the door again.

The living room remained an obstinate contradiction of terms.  Her father’s ghost was the only thing living in that room, maybe even the entire house.  Five bedrooms and two bathrooms dedicated to the brilliance that had closed its eyes.

Brienne sank onto the ancient well loved sofa and felt the burn in her eyes.  She had dreamed of being one of those heroes from the stories her father had told her. It was what drove her into the military, then it was what had left her broken into pieces that her father could only hold together with bits of super glue and epoxy. She dreamed of adventuring like Robin Hood, or protecting the week like all the knights of the round table.  She had wanted to be Sir Gawain or Sir Galahad; but somewhere along the way she had become Mrs. Havisham.

_I should have gone with him._

Brienne wasn’t fool enough to doubt how Jaime felt about her.  She knew, but the _fear_ , gods the _absolute terror_ of trusting her life into his hands.

Her heart.

Hyle had been poking around, she knew the former Sergeant loved the old house, but she didn't think real estate would be a proper basis for a relationship.

Plus, since his little stunt with his buddies, she hated the mean and cringed everytime he showed up in her art therapy class.

But, Jaime.  She already trusted him, knew him and his heart.  But loss.  The risk was too great

I should have gone with him.

Brienne let the tears fall and did not try to bat them away.  He was right, she had been tending this memory and pain for too long. That night as he lay on a gurney in the rattrap that passed for a field hospital, his hand bandaged and delirious, she had called him a coward for refusing to eat or even care enough to get out of bed.  She had taunted him the same way he had taunted her so often. Only that time, the stakes had been far higher.

He had called her a coward, and mayhaps he had been right.  She had lost everyone she loved or who had loved her.  Brienne huffed to herself and looked at the mantle of the fireplace across from her.  Still covered in the things that made this her father’s place.

Gods, this is a museum!

She laid back onto the couch and tried not to imagine where they would be right now had she just got into the damn car.

Brienne had not known how long she had rested on the couch, when she woke she ambled out onto the porch and cleared off her mess.  Cursing her stupidity for not clearing up dangerous weapons that could have been stolen.

As she pocketed her phone and put away her newly reassembled weapons, the phone in the kitchen rang.  Since her father’s death, she had nearly forgotten its existence.  Her father never had a cell phone, he was old school in his forms of communications.  Brienne lifted the receiver and greeted somberly.

“Come outside.” Jaime intoned with all the command of his former rank.

Her heart leapt and sank all at once. “Jaime, we talked about—“

“Brienne, we are both broken people, we have been through hell, separately and together.  I have too many family members and you have too few.  Let’s be family together.”

“Jaime, she tried, moving with the wireless phone.  She paused at the door of her father’s study but forced herself to go past it without the customary glance inside.

Just in case he was still there.

“Let me finish.” He insisted, still in that voice he had used so often on wayward recruits. “Brienne, are you still there?”

She hadn’t realized she had grown silent.  Nodding, she answered; surprised at the arid hole her mouth had become.

“Just listen to me, okay?” he plead through the phone.  Brienne wandered through the house as he spoke, unable to stay still lest she fall to her shaky knees.

“I want to get out of this town, Brienne.  I want us to get out of this town.  I want us to start over.  To forget and to remember.”

She understood, that feeling of living in the Nether until you could come forth as something different; something new.

“You stay in that house, Brienne.” He said, his voice had gone from commanding to pleading. “You stay in that house and you will die.  Not from loneliness or Radon poisoning.  You’ll live to be an old woman but the you inside, the you I love, will surely die.”

“Jaime,” she sniffed not realizing she had begun to cry again.

“You said you would just listen, Wench.  So listen.” He growled.  Brienne knew that tone, it was the same one that had coaxed her into therapy in the first place. “I won’t leave here without you.  I am sitting in my car, out front of your house.  I got as far as the turnoff for The Reach.  I couldn’t turn.  I made an illegal maneuver, you know that?  I made a U turn on a highway because I cannot leave here without you, because my anything is nothing without you.

“We are broken people, Brienne, broken, shattered and scattered.  But, our pieces can  fit together.  Maybe if we help put each other back together, we might find that are pieces fit together.  I think they already do.”

She sniffed again, tears rolled down her crooked nose and fell off at the tip.

“I won’t lie to you, because I never have.  I won’t lie and tell you this is gonna be a free ride.  Its going to be hard, and shitty at parts.  We’ll fight, we’ll shit on each other when we wake up from too many bad dreams about places we never want to be again.  But we will live.  The real kind of living. The kind that gets us somewhere.  The kind that makes us better people.  Just better.”

“I don’t know…” she squeaked in a voice she would have once called weak.

“Brienne, please.  Think of it as saving my life again.  If I go back to that house and live under that roof with my father and sister.  Even in the same town, Brienne, they will smother me alive.  Or, I’ll do something stupid.”

“You’d do that anyway,” she smiled into the phone.

“True, but if you’re with me we can keep the fallout to a minimum.”

Brienne slid to the floor against the front door, freedom lay through 7 inches of mahogany. She thought about the family she had lost.  Her brother when he was eight, her mother and sisters before that. Her father.

Renly.

Loss lived in that house, it had its own bedroom filled with nostalgic pictures and small clothes that were never worn more than once.

Freedom.

“You still with me, Wench?” Jaime’s voice broke through the fog of her memories. “yes,” she whispered in case the ghosts could hear.

“Come outside Brienne.  Just grab your keys, lock up the house and grab your purse. You don’t need anything else.  Just, please.  Come.”

“I’d need to pack, I can’t leave with nothing.”

“I’m a trust fund baby, you can trust me.” He said.

“Jaime.” She tried again, but felt herself rising off the floor.

“I mean it, don’t take anything out of that house.  Just open the door and take that long walk to my front seat.”

“Its not that long,” she smiled.

“It is, and I am here to walk you through it.”

Brienne had her purse hanging on her shoulder and her hand on the knob before she realized what she was doing.

The house creaked as she turned the knob.  She wanted to think it was in protest, but on the wind as she opened the door into the still night, she could swear she heard a voice from the past.

Jaime stood in front of his car, phone still at his ear.  She smiled at the evident surprise as she stepped out onto the porch, turning to make sure all the locks were secure.

He waited patiently as she made her way.  He had been right, it was a long walk, but each step seemed to echo that voice she had heard with the creek of the front door opening.

Goodbye.

 

 


End file.
